I know some will say this is a false choice, but I ask, what is more important, the economy or the deficit? The economy has steadily improved since the Great Recession but it has a long way to go to get back to a more historical norm for unemployment of around five percent. Since we know the economy is not yet booming, why are we so fixated on reducing the deficit and cutting spending? Many of the same people calling for spending cuts say we cannot increase taxes because it would harm the economy, but why do they think spending cuts will have no effect on the economy? In fact, many so-called deficit hawks say the deficit itself is harming the economy, which really makes no sense at all.

The economy has continued to add jobs month after month for three years now. Well over 5 million jobs have been created during that time, but job gains and economic growth in 2012 have lagged behind 2011. Is it possible the election is causing a drag on the economy?

All politicians and all political campaigns stretch the truth at times, but Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign has been callously dishonest. The latest in a string of flat-out lies comes with Romney’s attempt to sour Obama’s rescue of the auto industry. Instead of telling voters how he would improve the auto industry, Romney instead says that Chrysler plans to ship jobs to China. He said this more than once on the campaign trail and now there is a Romney campaign ad running in Ohio with the same false claim:

Robert Reich says Mitt Romney offers a question-mark when it comes to his plans for the economy. We’ve heard Romney and Republicans say that businesses are uncertain because of Obama’s big government agenda, but Reich posits that it is Romney who is offering uncertainty. Whether it’s his promise to repeal Obamacare (with no details on what he would replace it with) or his $5 trillion tax cut (with no details on which loopholes he will eliminate), Romney comes up short on specifics.

There goes one more Republican talking point against President Obama. Just as Mitt Romney and Republicans can no longer say there are fewer jobs now compared to when Obama took office, they also cannot say the unemployment rate has been above 8% for (x) months. That’s because today the Labor Department released September’s job numbers and the unemployment rate fell to 7.8% from 8.1% in August. It’s the lowest unemployment rate in 44 months, equaling the unemployment rate when President Obama took office. Note that the unemployment rate peaked at 10% later in 2009, so the economy has shown steady improvement for three years.

For “low information voters,” Republicans have repeatedly used the talking point that President Obama has not created one net new job during his first term. While this was technically true, it ignores the fact that millions of new jobs have been created during Obama’s first four years, post-Great Recession.